I found my iPhone has been more sluggish after upgrading to iOS 14. So I factory reset it last week. Here is my experience.
Firstly I had to sign in my Apple ID to use the phone. So Apple assumes all customers can access Internet and its servers are always up. Can I use my iPhone if Apple goes out of business like Nokia did? I can still use my Nokia X2-00 today.
iCloud was enabled in full by default. There was no option to disable iCloud during phone activation. Apple assumes all customers want to use iCloud. However, iCloud does not have E2E encryption for backups, photos, etc.
I turned off iCloud immediately after activation. Then I found I had to sign in separately for AppStore, iMessage, and Facetime. In addition, ApplePay (wallet) and Sign in with Apple, Find my phone, were no longer available. Airpods Pro won't switch sources automatically. My reasoning is that Apple does not care about users who do not use iCloud because they are the minority.
Since iOS 13 I notice a trend of declining software quality. iOS have gained more and more features. But so did the number of bugs. However, Android is still less polished. Maybe one day I will switch back to Android.
